


good night, good night, good night.

by ansutazu



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki AU, M/M, it got WORSE IT GOT WO R S E IM EMO, tfw u drop hanahaki au but then pick it back up and make it WORSE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11109345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ansutazu/pseuds/ansutazu
Summary: it was the kind of goodbye that seems utterly unique, yet also seems utterly commonplace. it bloomed in a moonlit night, much like a flower. and thus this gentle world is going to continue on, for thousands and millions of years. good night, good night, good night. // hanahaki keichi au. one-shot.





	good night, good night, good night.

The school garden’s scenery was all but familiar to the easygoing and elegant tea club — flowers of every color and shape decorate the landscape with their ethereal allure, the many crowds of tulips and poppies and peonies serving as elegant audiences to those who are nearby with an aroma so near perfection and perfect and sweet, bushes and bushes of roses at full-bloom smiling down at the student council president, to compliment his elegance with their own sense of poise.

Truly was the air of spring dancing in the atmosphere, a crisp and gentle breeze clipping through Eichi’s hair as he sips the tea provided by his own expense — and he wouldn’t have it any other way, for this blend of dried fruits and dried flowers and spices were what he so intensely treasured, what he so fervently desired out of such a delicacy. The maroon liquid, a concoction that seemed to lengthen his life span with just the sheer waft of scents it emitted from its cup, is taken in with one sophisticated sip, his precious tea cup held gently in that frail hand of his.

Ah, how relaxing.

“Kaichou-san, the blend you brought today is good, too!” The blue-haired first year perks up, eyes glittering with wonder and veneration at the emperor’s spoils. “You truly pick out the best blends, kaichou-san…if you don’t mind telling me, what’s the name of this tea?”

“Fufu, I’m glad you enjoy it, Hajime-kun. As for its name…it’s called ‘Emperor’s Clouds and Peach Tranquility’. Just the sound of it sounds tasteful, no?”

“More like fitting…” Ritsu mutters from the side, glancing at his own cup of tea with droopy eyes and taking a slow, drawn-out sip, “…for someone like Ecchan, I mean. ‘Tranquility’, though…I wish there was more of that.”

“Ahaha, but don’t you feel that ‘tranquility’ now, Ritsu-kun?” Eichi gesture with his free hand to the gardens that surrounded them, a genuine smile on his face as he takes in the bright hues of what he always loved. “Surrounded by such beauty, with different sights all blending together to make a perfectly vibrant picture…it’s so serene, so gentle — it should do nothing but set you at ease knowing that such magnificence is allowed to be in your presence. The flowers sing, the bushes whistle, the fountain hums, the clear blue sky vocalizes the splendor of it all — such warmth is only provided with the grace of gardens such as these. And in that warmth, Mother Nature allows you to lie down and bask in its glory — it is only a matter of doing so, of taking the initiative to accept Mother Nature’s invitation.”

“Geez…you could have just said that the garden is peaceful and ended it at that…” Ritsu sighs, placing his chin on the table and glancing over at the third-year with an exhausted expression. “Then again, it’s like you, Ecchan…again, that is.”

“Well, well — it’s crucial to appreciate the arts.” Eichi raises his precious tea cup again, getting ready to take yet another sip. But as he prepares to do so, he looks around at the roses, the flowers he loved the most — and they all began blurring together, the sight of them all plunging a sickening and bitter feeling in his stomach, irreversible even when he tries to ignore the pain, a mechanism fashioned into him as the years of his illness went by.

His illness — was that what it was? It would be a rather inconvenient moment to fall ill again, to falter to his symptoms…but this was unlike any ailment he experienced before with his illness, this was something _unfamiliar_. Such mysterious prodrome, playing with what he treasured most, troubled him greatly — would he have to go to the doctor again? Ah, but having to go to such a place would be truly troublesome…

He looks down at the tea in his cup, and the flowers’ aromas all mixed together into something unpleasant, something _bitter_. Hoping the tea would wash away whatever symptom had plagued him, he takes yet another sip, the hot liquid sliding down his throat with haste.

The tea he enjoyed so much tasted overwhelmingly bitter.

In the back of his throat, he felt something along the lines of something itchy, something… _prickly_. He tries to clear his throat, but in doing so, that barbed feeling scratches his throat, tears into the lining and sends Eichi into some terrible bout of pain. He coughs, coughs and hopes the irksome scraping in his throat clears away, but it just gets worse. It felt as if someone _thorny_ had begun grazing away and terrorizing his throat into shreds, rising up slowly with each helpless and hopeless cough and hack.

His lungs, too, did not find the feeling pleasant or agreeable. The ‘root’ of the ‘thorns’ felt as if it had settled in his degraded pair of lungs, heavy and prickly and _bitter_ , just disagreeably bitter. It felt as if _something_ was growing there, and when he looks up to the roses, they did not sing — instead, they laughed in pity.

“Kaichou-san…are you okay?”

“Ecchan…”

“I’m fine…I’m fine, I’ll be fine.” He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t find the strength to attain the much-needed air he required. He puts a hand on his chest, coughing once more.

What comes out of his mouth is one red rose petal, covered in his blood.

* * *

Apparently, it was called the ‘hanahaki disease’.

He was careful to describe his symptoms to the search engine, cautious to look at all the articles that came up, attentive to any sound that rang outside his room as he delved deeper into such a mysterious disease.

Apparently, it comes about when one develops feelings that are unrequited, that are one-sided. Apparently, flowers grow inside of you, they press against the insides of your lungs and suffocate the unfortunate victim.

Apparently, it is most likely that the person who contracted it will die.

Such notions were not new to Eichi; death was one of his closest friends, and he stared at them time and time again with baited breath, with a taunting raise of his eyebrows, asking, “So when are you going to finally take my life?”

Sometimes, he saw that ‘cute angel of death’ there.

And with the very thought of Keito, it felt as if a thorn had stabbed his heart multiple times. It felt as if it was bleeding out slowly, spouting out blood in an attempt to save Eichi’s most vital organs.

He wonders why, and he plays with the puzzle in his mind before he stares at the article about the ‘hanahaki disease’, before he remembers the rose petal that escaped his mouth earlier. Each realization felt like a painful jab to his heart, his heartbeat growing irregular as a vile taste settled on his tongue, as a loathsome warmth spreads across his body and across his face. His heart — fast one second, slow the next, writhing and struggling and weakening when _that guy_ crossed his mind.

That weak heart of his — ah, what turbulent feelings must it be going through right now! The thorns keep penetrating the organ as he delves deeper into Keito’s character — how he does not shy away from the very prospect of scolding Eichi (“You’re helpless, you know?”), how he does not sugarcoat his words and how he does not treat him with _pity_. Keito had always been so special to him since they met, since they day he met that ‘cute angel of death’ and decided that their relationship was something he’d hold dear. Their friendship grew strained, had to be woven together with childish fighting and quarrels — but it was still there, the feeling of warmth and security he cherished whenever Keito was around. For a while, it made his heart dance — and now, his heart was riddled with thorns, ebbing and throbbing and bearing the pain of that ‘feeling’ he felt.

Ah, so that’s what it was.

Apparently, he was in love with Keito.

* * *

Surgery was a possibility for the ‘hanahaki disease’, but to explain that to his parents…they would surely fret, they would surely worry too much, and Keito would not fail to get to the bottom ofthe ‘hanahaki disease’.

That was the last thing he wanted Keito to know — that the cause of his pain was _him_. To have that friend of him become even more worrisome than he already was, to live with the fact that Eichi’s love for him was killing him, to know that the fact that he didn’t return those feelings was what would end Eichi…as much as they disagreed and bickered, Eichi would never want to put Keito through such guilt.

And so Eichi decided to bear this pain on his lonesome, keeping the thorns stuffed down his throat the the roses that kept puncturing his lungs hidden under lock and key. Ah, it truly was a painful thing…‘love’, that is.

What a new feeling — or rather, it wasn’t ‘new’, but unnamed and never considered for so long that putting a label on it now, a label of romanticism and hope and regret, seemed so quick, yet so _right_. So this was ‘love’…his first love, his first glimpse at an intimate type of relationship he’d never quite taken into account before. For an emperor like him to feel such things…his heart really _was_ weak.

But while he was determined to keep Keito oblivious to his conditions, his persistent friend picked up on the extraneous coughing and frequent gasps for breath, and while the two were alone in the student council room (Eichi, for once, miraculously doing work — only to avoid Keito’s stare, which was definitely stabbing holes in him), the vice president pushes up his glasses and turns to his childhood friend with determined eyes.

“Eichi…you’ve been coughing a lot lately.”

“So it seems…” With that sentence, he lets out a cough, those red roses pushing against his lungs plunged in eternal agony. Thorns scratch along his lungs now, thorns pierce through his heart deeper and longer than before — as if they were stuck there forever the moment those heart chambers are stabbed and demolished, his heart trying too hard to pump blood through the body that had begun punishing its owner’s own feelings.

He covers his mouth, pushing down the petals that threatened to fall out and betray his cover. He swallows those bitter red rose petals — how appalling it was to look at them now knowing those red roses of ‘love’ meant harm for him.

He clears his throat once he pushes them as far down as he can — scratching his throat against those thorns in the process, and he tries his best to smile and hide the wince he felt contort his face for a split second ( _God, Keito, I hope you didn’t see that_ ). “Perhaps it’s just allergies. It’s spring, after all — pollen is a common enemy.”

“True…” Keito plays with the thought for a minute, looking dissatisfied with the answer Eichi had given him. He turns to the blonde again, the pout he had earlier refined and defined. “Still, is it normal to cough this much? And you’ve gone breathless so many times…I think you should go see your doctor, see if — ”

“No.” Such defiance was new to Eichi — usually, he was the one to instill some sense of authority, but here he _rebelled_. Those petals teased him, laughed at him as they crawled up his throat again, and he tries to choke them back, no matter how harrowing it was to keep those red roses of unrequited love out of sight. “It may be bad now…but it’ll pass, you know? I’ve lived for this long — I’m sure it’s nothing but a small hurdle.”

Keito sighs, and his heart tightens, writhes, wrings and is beaten mercilessly by an avalanche of rose thorns as his friend’s worry plagues him with guilt and regret — new emotions piled on top of one another, it seemed. To feel guilty, to feel regret, to feel this burning hatred for himself rekindled as inferiority loomed over him once more — all these emotions were new to the emperor, to the boy that had all the power in the world.

Those were truly burdensome, but that ‘love’ that kept him alive and killed him slowly just kept growing.

* * *

Things didn’t get better, and as Eichi crawled out of his bed and into the Tenshouin gardens with the moon shining down on him, it seemed as if his closest friend was finally ready to take him. He was going to die.

He strolls through the gardens in his pajamas — slowly, for every breath wasted is one he can never have back, each intake of oxygen muffled by all the roses that tore into his lungs and diminished any ability to breathe. His body quivered when he tried to take in a huge breath, and he felt all those roses rustle and ravage his lungs as he let out an extremely long breath out, closing his eyes to try and alleviate all that pain. His throat was long done, torn into shreds by those thorns that seemed to grow bigger and stronger until they finally got the best of him, and he coughs up trails of red roses, covered immensely with his own blood.

It probably didn’t help that with each cough, there were more petals falling out, and with each petal came clots and clots and clots of blood that would never be replenished, for his poor heart had had enough as well. It kept chugging for as long as it can, it leapt whenever it thought of Keito, it was so painfully stepped on when he thought of Keito — each heartbeat counted down his days, minutes, seconds, plagued with so many thorns that the fact that it was beating just so slightly was a miracle in itself, the fact that it tried so hard to keep him alive even though death held out its inviting hand to him.

He wandered into the rose gardens his family kept, the gardens he so loved to escape to as a child. These were the bushes and towers that he dragged Keito to when he insisted on fleeing from the watchful eyes of everyone in the Tenshouin palace, the bench placed so conveniently in the center of it all the place where he and Keito often sat to rest in the sun, where they shared those memories only childhood friends could remember with such warmth.

It was so, so painful now.

He walks to the bench, sitting down and looking at all the roses that surrounded him, trying to numb the pain of all the roses inside of him. All the roses growing and thriving around him, all the roses that laughed and jeered and mocked him as he continued to die — the flowers he loved so much, they were now so revolting to look at. Unwanted hues of white, pink, yellow, _red_ — nauseating, all of them, he wanted to tear through those bushes and destroy them until there was nothing left but trampled petals and pitiful green leaves all over the floor. For a second, he wills himself to do it, he gets ready to hurl and to exert any drop of energy he has left to demolishing these hideous flowers — until he realizes that he can’t he physically can’t, he’s slumped on the bench and helpless and unable to even lift his hand to try and grasp at least one rose out of its disgusting bush, unable to step on even just one petal and to reiterate what power he once had.

It was gone, it was all gone, and soon, he’ll be gone, too. This was truly horrendous, a death through unrequited love and revolting flowers a little too unfit for an emperor such as he. He thought he would die in glory, die in battle, die with authority and power and strength and dominance; he never thought he’d die such a pitiful death such as this, withering away like the flowers he used to pick as a child. Ah, that was him, that was him — wilting, wilting slowly like the flowers that were killing him.

“Eichi!”

A familiar voice snaps him out of the lull that beckons him to death, and he weakly turns his head, gasps raggedly as Keito’s head bobs in and out of his vision, as his friend rushes to his side and in front of him, kneeling and rustled from all the running he did.

And yet, Keito always glowed in the moonlight.

“Keito…” His voice is weak — it was so helpless, he kind of wanted to laugh. He’d never felt this weak before, breath practically being pressed out of him slowly, slowly but surely as his lungs finally give way to those ugly red roses, as his throat already finished spits out its last words, its last thoughts. “Keito, what — ”

“What the hell happened to you? Some ‘allergies’, huh? You just avoided the problem, you just ran away — you’re stupid for that, you know? Now you’re like this, now you’re in pain…seriously, can you think about the consequences of your actions? Nevermind that, I’m taking you to the hospital right now. Can you move? I’m going to call a car for you, and they’ll take it from there. Just…stay put, stay — ”

Eichi coughs, and unable to cover what would appear, out comes those repulsive red roses, covered in so much blood that the loss was draining for Eichi. His heart was surely dying now, surely reaching its conclusion in keeping him alive. Ah, can he even call it his ‘heart’, a heart riddled with thorns on every inch and every vein, painful to hold and painful to keep pumping? It was a mess, that’s what it was, unrecognizable as an organ but as a relic of his one-sided love, and all the pain it was put through would surely be finished come just a few more moments. He was nearing his end, he could see death so clearly, so much more than before…

“What the…Eichi, what…?”

“I didn’t want you to worry…you know.” He tries to smile — ah, how the moonlight spills over Keito so wonderfully. To die in front of such a beautiful sight, to die in such guilt, to die in such remorse…to die in front of Keito is truly the best and worst way to die.

He coughs once more, the petals all the more abundant as he finally feels himself letting go, finally slipping away.

But before he does, he lets out those words he’d held on to for so long.

“I loved you, Keito.”

And so he dies, petals falling out of his mouth as he coughed for the last time, blue eyes gazing up at the moon up above.

There were white lily petals amongst all the blood-covered rose petals.

* * *

“Stupid…”

Keito crouches over Eichi’s grave, covered with white lilies in a variety of vases. His family, he assumed, came by to decorate their only son’s grave.

‘Hanahaki disease’ — that’s what the called it, a disease that forms from unrequited love. His family sighed, saying just how childish he was to let his emotions get the best of him, for his long-term illness to fall to such a short-term disease. They thought he was strong, they thought he would know better. They regarded him with slight shame as they scrambled to find the next heir, as they scrambled to figure out just what to do with the Tenshouin business now that their only heir had died.

They were such stupid people.

Spring gave way to summer, and the white lilies were wilting, stooped over the vases with pitiful stances in their appearances. Nothing beautiful can stay for long, it seems.

“Stupid…we’re both stupid people, you know.” There was a face mask that covers Keito’s mouth, but he pulls it down to talk to Eichi’s grave. He lays down the flowers he brought, the flowers he picked from the Tenshouin’s own gardens — roses, dyed with a familiar red.

“If only I had realized it sooner, too. It’s okay — you won’t be alone, since it seems as if I’ll be joining you soon. Just wait for me, Eichi.”

Keito coughed, and coughed, and coughed.

What came out of his mouth were red rose petals, covered in blood.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, first of all! i scraped my first draft of this, actually, and wrote...this instead. it got worse, really, i originally didn't plan to have keito see eichi's death but...ha...
> 
> about the ending, i kinda imagined...that after eichi's death, keito realizes that he shared the same feelings, but since eichi's dead, it's "unrequited" since eichi physically can't return those feelings, and so keito develops hanahaki disease, too. tl:dr is that i wanted to add in that extra angst.
> 
> as always please feel free to point out any mistakes bc i'm a highkey mess, lol. i feel a little unsatisfied with this, but...perhaps that just means that there'll be a rewrite someday.
> 
> also! i listened to a variety of songs while writing this, all of them kinda helped me set the mood during different parts of this fic. more specifically, i listened to pizzicato drops by toa, and then ghost in the hell and hello night by hanyu maigo! hello night had the most influence, as seen by the title and the summary, and the whole "it bloomed in the moonlit night, much like a flower" line...it's a good song.


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